Immigration activist risks all to keep families intact

Published 12:00 am, Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Photo: Associated Press File Photo

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In 2007, Elvira Arellano and her U.S.-born son arrive in Mexico City. Arellano was deported after living for a year in a Chicago church. Back in the U.S. seeking asylum, Arellano now speaks out for immigration reform and a halt to deportations. less

In 2007, Elvira Arellano and her U.S.-born son arrive in Mexico City. Arellano was deported after living for a year in a Chicago church. Back in the U.S. seeking asylum, Arellano now speaks out for immigration ... more

Photo: Associated Press File Photo

Immigration activist risks all to keep families intact

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Elvira Arellano's journey — coming to the United States illegally, giving birth to a son, defying deportations and becoming a leader in the immigration reform movement — remains a remarkable story.

For as much ink as she has received, the details of her journey haven't been as well known, perhaps because it's so unremarkable and is one shared by 11 million others in the United States.

This March, Arellano defied the law again and re-entered the country with her son, now 15. She was granted emergency parole and will seek asylum.

Her life has been threatened in Mexico for speaking for humanitarian treatment of Central Americans, often victims of cartels and others who profit from their vulnerability. A Tijuana refugee center is named for her.

Those who oppose reform may not sympathize with her case. After all, she used a fake Social Security card to work at O'Hare International Airport, where she cleaned empty airplanes, paying into a retirement fund from which she's unlikely to profit.

Arellano didn't set out to live and work in the United States or have a child here. (She now has another son, born in Mexico.) At 23, she was a secretary in a Michoacán supermarket, handling payments and payroll.

It was the mid-'90s, and the North American Free Trade Agreement would be felt. Cheaper imports and a peso devaluation devastated the store.

Her family was affected, too. Her father managed a farming cooperative, which couldn't compete with imported produce. Government subsidies came to a halt. Living with her parents was out of the question.

Arellano moved to Tamaulipas, lived with an aunt and worked in a maquiladora, another hallmark of NAFTA.

She was barely making a living, however, and the promise of better work across the border — in jobs most U.S. workers are unwilling to take — was too strong. She ultimately paid a smuggler to get her across the border, a journey fraught with danger, particularly for women.

By 1998, she was in Washington state, working as a nanny and in a laundry. Her son Saulito was born there. His father promptly left.

Arellano decided to move to Chicago, where she worked two jobs, at one point both full time. She slept for only a few hours at a time.

Meantime, Saulito became a Chicagoan.

After 9/11, she said, their lives changed dramatically. President George W. Bush, a supporter of immigration reform, abandoned it as the war on terror began. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was in full alert to potential terror threats.

Airports came under high security. By this time, Arellano, who was working part time at O'Hare and cleaning houses full time, was caught up in a sting.

Before dawn one day, armed ICE agents stormed her residence and asked if she possessed weapons, a ludicrous question. As afraid as she and Saulito were, their biggest fear was separation.

He has lived in Mexico with his mother, visiting Chicago most summers. He's now in high school there.

Arellano has become one of the nation's most articulate, knowledgeable activists on immigration reform. She was in San Antonio recently to speak before the City Council to get its support of a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to end deportations until reform is passed.

The image painted of immigrants as taking advantage of the system is false if you know anything about the immigrants in your lives. You might not see them, but they're there: cleaning your houses, trimming your trees and preparing your restaurant meals.

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Arellano is not a criminal, and working isn't — shouldn't be — a crime. The internationally recognized activist is just a parent trying to support her family. And she continues to risk everything to teach the simple, just idea that the United States needs to keep its immigrant families together.